Username: Password:

Organizing Projects in Adobe Premiere Pro

By: Steve

So you know that feeling when you're making your final video and you have over 1000 clips sitting there and you're scrolling up and down the project window trying to find that clip you're looking for and you've wasted 5 minutes of precious production time for some stupid little clip. Well I feel your pain, and this is why I'm going to show you how to organize your projects better via use of sequences and bins.

Sequences essentially are timelines within a project, normally by default you'll have 'sequence 1' already there and that's the timeline you are working in the whole time. But there is a better way to organize all the scenes in your production by using multiple scenes then having your final sequence where you just drag all the scenes into and then export the final project out. Its a really simple concept but will make you much more productive when making those larger videos.

Bins are just folders, that's it. No different than having your folder in windows. Personally, I'll have a bin that corresponds with each sequence (part) in the video. Within that bin will contain all the files that i'll be using. But there is no restriction, you can have your files imported anywhere in the project, this is just for organizational purposes.

First you see your project window, with one sequence already in it. And if you look down at the bottom of the picture you'll also see the timeline has one tab that shows that you only have one seqence in this project thus far. Project Management In Adobe Premiere
Now right click in the project window and go to 'New Item > Sequence'. Now you're going to have to define how many tracks of audio and video you want, also give it a name for who's part it's going to be like 'Jim' or 'Mike' for all intents and purposes I used 'skater 1' hit ok. Now I went ahead and made a second sequence for 'skater 2' Project Management In Adobe Premiere
Now this will be a good time to create the bins for all the files that correspond to 'skater 1' and 'skater 2'. Just right-click in the project window and go to 'New Bin'. I renamed them 'skater 1' and 'skater 2'. Now when you import footage just highlight the destination bin and then file>import as normal and the footage will end up there. You can also define the destination folder in the capture window. Now we have 2 bins and 2 sequences, you'll notice there are tabs on the timeline for both sequences. Project Management In Adobe Premiere
Now I clicked on 'skater 2' sequence tab in the timeline window and dragged his footage in the timeline. This is where you edit their part as normal, as you can see I have 2 tricks which corresponds nicely to real-life situations. I also went and did the same for 'skater 1'. Project Management In Adobe Premiere
So now in theory you have all these separate timelines of all these different parts and you need to incorporate them together into the final project. This is where we're going to have to make another sequence for the final video. Project Management In Adobe Premiere
This is it, now you just go to the project window and drag your individual 'skater 1' and 'skater 2' sequences down to the final video sequence. They are going to appear as one huge block, but actually within that block is all the edited clips and properies of their respective parts. This makes it nice because lets say you want 'skater 2' to have the first part, instead of dragging a ton of clips all you have to do is move one in front of the other, and that's it! also you can apply properties to a seqence and apply for all within it, like fades, audio fades, etc. Anything you apply to the sequence clip in that final video timeline applies to all clips within that sequence. Project Management In Adobe Premiere

Pretty simple huh? yeah that's what I said, now you can really start cranking through those full length videos with ease.

Search Filters

place search filters here